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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Thought I had missed it!

Today was a beautiful day in New Jersey! It was sunny and warm with a high around 73 degrees F. A perfect day for yard work! I mowed the lawn for the first time this Spring; and yanked a whole bunch of dandelions out of the front yard. For some reason, there's only a few in the backyard; but there was a whole mess of them out front.

By the time I got all my work done, it was dinner time! I was disheartened because I thought that I had missed QRP To The Field. But it turns out that QRPTTF is NEXT weekend, not today; so I am still in good shape. For those of you not in the know, QRPTTF is a QRP Sprint that is held every April (last weekend). The idea is to get out of doors and operate away from commercial power. Each year, QRPTTF has a theme; and this year it's museums. The idea this year is to operate from your town's local museum.

We don't have one here in South Plainfield, at least not one that I know about. I'll probably set up in the backyard, running the K1 off my 12V SLA battery and will probably use the PAC-12. I would set up in a local park; but my wife works on Saturdays and I'll be home with the kids. I think that after an hour or so in the the park that they would probably get bored and would start getting antsy to get back home. If I work out of the backyard, the kids can have free run to play, watch TV or whatever; so it makes more sense to do it that way.

80 Meters was good tonight; not much QRN still, even though it's getting warmer and warmer. I had two good QSOs with WB2KKI and W3MC. Activity has died down though and the stations I am hearing now are participating in either the Michigan QSO Party or the YU DX contest.